California cuisine

Its restaurants reflect all of that.

And perhaps the most interesting question today is not what happened to California cuisine, but what California cuisine has become.

My guest, Soleil Ho, has spent years thinking about these questions.

A former restaurant critic and cultural columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and a James Beard Award winner, she has always approached food as something larger than what's on the plate, a window into the culture, the people, and the economics of the place we live.

She recently helped assemble for Alter Journal a look at 25 essential restaurants, defining a new California cuisine.

And in another act of very California reinvention, she has co-founded Coyote, a worker-owned Bay Area media collective that's rethinking how local journalism is done.

It's an interesting moment to talk about the relationship between food, culture, and the changing character of California, and about the institutions that tell us who we are.

Thank you.

Okay

... are b- co-chefs at Written By the Seasons, and I met her in Los Angeles, and I, I still think our cooking is really influenced by California cuisine.

Okay.

Um, which really to me means fresh, seasonal, I mean, local when we can, of course.